Page 2 OS Installation Fun

Well here we go. The hardware is basically in place and functioning normally, minus some serious cable and hose dressing that will come later. On to the OS installation!! At this point I wish I could say I did a normal installation of WinXP Pro with all the latest and greatest drivers and here are the benchmarks. But alas, that was not to be... Initial indications lead me to believe that this MOBO needs a BIOS update pretty damn badly. As of 10.11.02 there is very little support for this board on Gigabyte's website. Not surprising as this board has just hit the retail market. The only support offering is the shipping vF2 BIOS and Awardflash utility, so I am on my own here. Let me make a summation of my observations about the current BIOS first:

1) If you are putting together an all IDE system you will probably not have many issues with your initial XP or 2K installation.
2) Attempting to get a 64bit SCSI HBA to cooperate with the onboard Promise RAID controller is like giving a cat a bath... then trying to brush his teeth.
3) Getting any type of audio card (including the onboard AC97) may just be impossible at this time. None of the other reviews I have read even included sound in their test setups. Not surprising considering what I have run into. Details later.
*edit* The soundcard issue turned out to be a WinXP issue not a MOBO issue after all.
4) The shipping BIOS does not address the memory SPD properly. Do yourself a HUGE favor. If you plan on using Crucial Registered ECC PC2100 modules like I did, manually set the CAS latency to 2.5. to start, then try more aggressive settings later on. This lil diddy cost me hours of random crashes as the SPD sets this to CAS2.
5) Not sure whether this is BIOS related but definitely worth mentioning. I cannot get the system to boot to DOS using the 3.5 floppy at all. (this will really suck for BIOS updates). I've tried both a BIOS boot disk that uses Caldera DOS and a XP formatted boot disk. They both turn to gibberish when I attempt to boot from them in the 3.5 floppy. I can boot to DOS using either disk in the LS120 fine, but Norton Ghost 2002 will not run from there as it is looking for a 3.5 floppy A drive. I find this very odd as both A and B drives work perfectly both reading and writing from the OS. This means I get to put my SCSI HD in a backup system to do a drive image. Not the easiest thing when it's connected to a water block.

Ok now on to some details. Basically I was trying to take all the components from my Tyan Tiger MPX system and install them in this setup. Here is the rundown of the parts I am currently using:

GA-7DPXDW+
2ea. XP2100
1GB (4x256)Crucial Registered EEC PC2100
Radeon 9700 Pro
Adaptec 39160 Ultra 160 HBA
18GB Seagate X15-36LP HD
2x 120GB WD 1200JB HD in RAID 1/ Onboard Promise 20276 Controller
TDK 40/12/48B CDRW (Secondary slave)
BTC 16X DVD (Secondary Master)
Mitsubishi LS120 (Primary master)
3.5 Floppy
Enermax EG465PVE(FCA) 460Watt PS
Hercules Fortissimo2 Digital/ Audigy MP3/ Hercules Maxi Sound Muse and Onboard AC97(Read on to see why)

The Radeon occupy's the AGP slot, here is where the PCI cards landed.

64bit PCI 1 empty
32bit PCI 2 empty
64bit PCI 3 Adaptec 39160
32bit PCI 4 empty
32bit PCI 5 Fortissimo2(to start)

Now for some fun with the BIOS. All of the settings in the F2 BIOS are very familiar. This is supposed to be a workstation/server MOBO after all not a OC'ing monster like some other Gigaboards. So I trolled thru the BIOS setup and made my usual changes to the boot order:

SCSI then RAID
Floppy
CDROM
SCSI

I disabled the AC97 and left most of the other settings at their defaults as they seemed fine. Here is where the fun began. Upon booting, the SCSI BIOS came up then shot straight to booting the OS from the CDR. Drawing from past experience I knew that if the RAID BIOS never has a chance to initialize the OS will never see the RAID. OK then... lets try setting the BIOS to boot RAID then SCSI. The system starts into the boot process, the RAID controller does it's bit then the SCSI BIOS comes up and see's the SCSI HD. Great right?? Nope. When WinXP gets to the install portion it only see's the 120GB RAID partition. Bummer..... :( Let me say up front right here that swapping PCI slots and manually assigning IRQ's will do you no good. I spent a few hours(and beers) getting this one figured out and will not bore you with the shitty lil details. Here is the fix:

1) Unplug the system from the wall.
2) Clear the CMOS with jumper JP11
3) Let the BIOS load the setup defaults upon boot.
4)When the process fails to let you install the OS for obvious reasons (no HD detected again) do the ol' 3 fingered salute (ctrl+alt+del) and immediately get back into the BIOS setup. Set the boot order much like you tried to the first time you set up the BIOS:

SCSI then RAID
Floppy
CDROM
SCSI

The difference being this time it should see the RAID controller after the SCSI BIOS loads. Don't ask me why as I did not program this POS BIOS. I just know it works.

So finally your Xp install can see your SCSI HD, YAY right?? Well it was VERY short lived celebration. XP gets to the point where you would normally press F8 to agree to the Lic and carry on when the BSOD's start. The first string I got was telling me there were issues with the USB controller. Hell I'm thinking no problem, disable the USB in the BIOS and get on with my life. That done I try the install again. This time around I get the familiar IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_Equal... BSOD. If you have never seen this BSOD message, you have not been playing with NT/2k/XP very long. My first thought was bye bye sound card. At which point I pulled the Fortissimo 2. This left only the Radeon 9700 and Adaptec 39160 in the PCI slots. The BSOD's continued through the night into the VERY early morning. At one point I gave up on XP and loaded Win2k which the system seemed to like. Got SP 2 installed and thought I was home free for a Win2K basic build. But then SP3 install took a huge crapola. Many hours (and beers) later I found the heart of the problem, my RAM does not like to run at CAS2. Seems like a simple thing but after setting the CAS to 2.5 things got MUCH better. Kicking myself in the ass I slid into bed about 3am stinking of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Ok so day 3 of my upgrade starts. XP installs fine with all the PCI devices in their original positions. Everyting seems to take fine but the Fortissimo 2 sound card. I DL and install the latest 2.03 drivers from the Hercules website. But the system just has problems with this card no matter which remaining PCI slot I stuff it into. Well on to the Creative Audigy. I'll spare you the gory details, the Audigy MP3 will not work either. FU*K!! Getting kinda tired of playing at this point. I dig around in the closet and find a Maxi Gamer (Hercules) Muse sound card. De-install all the previous Audigy drivers, reboot twice and install the muse. The OS finds it and asks for drivers which I provide, re-boot to find the Muse not able to work either :(. Ok then, on to the onboard AC97. I'm getting pertty f00kin desperate to hear sumtin from my Klipsch 4.1's at this point. Back into the BIOS and enable the AC97. System boots and asks for drivers. I direct the OS to the driver disk that came with the Gigaboard and it seems satisfied. After being prompted for a reboot I comply. Upon booting I am hoping to hear that familiar annoying MS sound byte... I wait... and wait... and wait....the OS is now running....Fudgemms :(. So as of 2:11am Sat Oct 12 my system still has no sound. But I am full of beers and ready for bedytime. I have not proof read this page yet but am fairly sure you can get the gist up to this point. Tomorrow (today??) I will prolly try a Phillips Accoustic edge card and see what happens. The Fry's 30 day hardware gurantee is great for just such occasions :) More to come......

Well it turned out the sound issue was an XP thang after all. After a low level format of the HD the Fortissimo2 came right up with the newest drivers...YAY.

The next issue to pop up was the Promise RAID controller. After transferring about 80GB of stuffs onto the RAID 1 I noticed a ton of corrupt files. So I broke(deleted) the mirror and even deleted the "special" sector as described in the Giga manual. Rebuilt a brand spankin new array and formatted the whole 120GB. Still major corruption of all data written to the array. Tried both drivers from the Giga site and installation disk with no success.

At this point I tried Promises site for assistance.... forget it. Big ol' disclaimer on the support page stating if you need assistance for built in MOBO devices "GO AWAY WE WILL NOT HELP YOU!!" See your MOBO manuf's support... drat... Well Giga's support for this MOBO is non existant. The only info on their site is the shipping BIOS and flash utility. Try calling or emailing them..... trust me.. they do not want to hear from you and you'll never get a response. To this day 10.31.02 I still have not gotten so much as an email response from them.

Well I gave up on the board and returned it, cost me a $40 restocking fee and about a weeks worth of frustration. After scanning many message boards I found a lot of peeps doing the same. My Tyan Tiger now enjoys the benefit of water cooling and I get my nice stable system back. It took me a total of 3 hours to get a completely functional system after swapping my Tyan MOBO back in. A much better experience :).

Final words

This MOBO sure looked great on paper and I hope they fix it as I'd still love to own one. Bottom line is until they come out with a Rev.2 board I recommend steering clear of this particular item.

Scoot